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Dr Roland Smith.
As part of first year laboratory course you are required to keep a lab book. The
keeping of detailed records of your work is essential both as a student and as a
professional scientist. More generally, recording what you did, what you found, who
you spoke to, how much money you spent etc are critical aspects of good business
practice outside the field of scientific research. The aim of this document is to
highlight why lab books are important and how you should go about keeping them.
Tough
Clear
The lab book doesnt have to be pretty, but it must be legible and
contain sufficient detail (headings, figure captions, table titles, units
etc) to make the contents understandable years later.
True
The lab book is a record of what you see and do. Dont embellish it,
dont draw plots of raw data the way you think they should look, draw
them the way they are. Dont throw away bad points and things
which dont appear to agree with theory at the time.
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Aims
Background
Description of set up
Review
Definitive data
Comparisons and
conclusions
Summary
Closure
Note: Some people reserve the last page of the lab book for an index of the books
contents which grows as the book is used. To do this you need to number the pages in
your lab book. Even if you dont use an index, numbered pages can be very useful for
cross-referencing other material in the book. e.g. you might re-do an experiment on
Nov 17th 2002 that you first attempted on Oct 24th 2002. On Nov 17th you might write
on page 60: I have found a systematic error which must have affected the results
taken on Oct 24th 2002 (see page 35). Cross reference this by adding a note to your
original work on page 35 saying: Nov 17, 2002, See note on page 60.
The simple sketch overleaf is quicker to draw, conveys more information and is
actually easier to read important points off. Freehand drawing of the scope trace
makes it much easier to include things like the ringing effect seen below. The text
on the figure identifies it with a specific measurement and also highlights some queries
that might need looking at again.
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